"High and healthy" was how Forest Hill was described in the 1930s. Forest Hill is one of the highest hills in London with spectacular views towards central London and the North Downs .

Originally part of the Great North Wood, providing timber for the great dockyards at nearby Deptford, until the mid 19th century Forest Hill was sparsely inhabited with charcoal burners and woodsmen.

Lithograph by L. J. Wood and J. R. Jobbins, published by R. Tyas, 1839.

When this view from what is now the Devonshire Road area was published to mark the opening of the London and Croydon Railway in 1839, the tracks were cutting through open country in Forest Hill.

Dartmouth Arms was the original name for Forest Hill station. It was taken from the adjoining pub, one of the very few buildings in the area.

In this picture the pub is part of the small group seen in the centre. It is significant that the caption calls it the Dartmouth Arms, Sydenham, for Forest Hill scarcely existed as a suburb, the name being used for only a few houses in Honor Oak Road .
Within fifteen years Forest Hill was established as the name for the district and the station, from which hundreds of houses radiated.

The opening of the Forest Hill Station (originally under the name of Dartmouth Arms) on the London & Croydon Railway in 1839 gave the first great boost to the development of the suburb.

Until then the Forest Hill name had been applied exclusively to fifteen or twenty houses in Honor Oak Road . Railways continued to be a major influence on the building history of Sydenham and Forest Hill. Eleven stations were opened between 1839 and 1886, and seven of these surviveThe address of the few others in the area was Sydenham Common.

Dartmouth Place , the row of cottages adjoining Dartmouth Arms, became Forest Hill's first shopping centre soon after the opening of the station in 1839.

By the 1890s it was fully organised top guard commuters against the weather, with Campion's hard wearing boots at 29 Dartmouth Road flanked by Day's umbrella shop at 31.

New suburbs were a magnet for architects and builders, who when successful left an indelible mark on the areas in which they worked.

E. C. Christmas set up his own business in this converted and expanded cottage in 55 Dartmouth Road around 1890.

Consequently, his career stretched from an age when he was building large detached houses in the old Forest Hill tradition, to the less expensive years between the wars when he made a living by converting similar buildings into flats.

In the Perry Vale area, where his style is still pervasive, he made a curious bid for immortality by giving his houses names of which the first letters spelt out 'Ted Christmas' and 'Laura' his wife

With the coming of the railways, Forest Hill became a popular retreat for the wealthy, including the wealthy tea merchant, collector and Liberal politician Frederick Horniman MP.

Mr Horniman began his collection as a private hobby, in the course of his travels in Egypt , India , Ceylon (now Sri Lanka ), Burma , China , Japan , Canada and the USA . by the 1880s it had grown large enough to fill his home at Surrey House, 100 London Road (which adjoined the county boundary). The story goes that his wife issued an ultimatum that the collection would have to go or she would. The collection stayed but the family moved to Surrey Mount on the hill behind.

In 1890 Horniman opened Surrey House to the public and it became one of the most popular attractions in south London . It soon needed a larger home and the current building was opened in 1901.

This handsome and distinctive museum still stands today on the heights of Forest Hill amidst a lovely

16-acre park with gardens and is open to the public, free of charge.

The Horniman Museum underwent a £10 million renovation and expansion. Other buildings of local interest and architectural merit include the Forest Hill Library, Forest Hill Pools and The Capitol cinema now an innovative J. Wetherspoon pub conversion. The heart of Forest Hill town centre is a designated conservation district.

Forest Hill, Sydenham and Crystal Palace housed one of the major German communities in London , composed mostly of wealthy merchants, with a sprinkling of musicians and artists.

The German Evangelical Church was founded in temporary accommodation in 1875, and the church was built in 1883.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the pastor from 1933 to 1935 and the church was named after him at the end of the World War II. It was bombed during the war, and rebuilt.

Tudor Hall, which was originally known as Red Hall, was built in 1854 - 1855, and was probably first occupied by one of Queen Victoria 's maids of honour.

It was the largest house in Dartmouth Park , an estate built for the Earl of Dartmouth in the 1850s around Christ Church , the spire of which can be seen on the left.

This was one of the Forest Hill developments planned after the opening of the station in 1839, and given added impetus in 1852 by the news that the Crystal palace was coming to Sydenham.

Between 1865 and 1908 Tudor Hall was a very smart boarding school for girls.

The main body of the house was demolished in 1961, and only the wing on the right survives.

There was little need for state education in Forest Hill during the 19th century, when the numerous private schools catered for the middle classes and the church schools for the working classes.

However, the many smaller houses built south of Stanstead Road in the 1890s, of which these in Elsinore Road are typical, overstreched the churches.

The London County Council stepped in with the Kilmorie Road School , built in 1903. It was damaged during World War II, but has been restored under the new name of Roger Manwood School .

The West Kent Park Estate, in the angle of Stanstead Road and Brockley Rise, was laid out c.1850 by a Farrington Street wine merchant named Arthur Gurney.

He was lucky to buy the fields a few years before the Crystal Palace boom hugely inflated the land prices in the area, but unlucky to have sold it again almost immediately in small plots.

As a result West Kent Park became a rare poor area, almost a slum, in the middle of wealthy Forest Hill

Malham Road , which was originally called South Road , was demolished with nearly all of West Kent Park in the 1970s and replaced by flats.

Forest Hill Today

Forest Hill is bordered by Sydenham, Crystal Palace , Dulwich and Brockley, and is a charming "up and coming" London village (population 16,368) located in the Borough of Lewisham in Southeast London .

Forest Hill is approximately six miles from Central London with excellent public transport links, schools, parks, shops and restaurants. The town centre is home to 169 small, predominately independently owned businesses offering a wide range of convenience and comparison goods and services. The town centre benefits from an active traders association and a town centre management programme.

Davids Road Brick wall mural

Coming soon

The East London Line Project (formerly known as ELLX) will extend and upgrade the existing (London Underground Limited) East London Line, converting it into a new metro-style (National Rail) train service. This will provide services that will ultimately extend North to Highbury & Islington, South to West Croydon and West to Clapham Junction and in the future could potentially facilitate ‘orbital' journeys around London .

The project will be delivered in two phases. Phase one will extend from the existing station at New Cross Gate onto the National Rail network south to Crystal Palace and West Croydon and include Honor Oak Park, Forest Hill and Sydenham Stations. Phase one of the project will be delivered by June 2010.

Lewisham Borough's famous residents, past and present

Danny Baker (Broadcaster)
Kate Bush (singer/song-writer)
James Callaghan (Labour Prime Minister)
Sir James Clark-Ross (polar explorer)
"Big" Jim Connell (socialist)
Ernest Dowson (poet)
Alfred "Titch" Freeman (cricketer)
Gabrielle (singer/song-writer)
Sir Isaac Hayward (politician)
Glenda Jackson MP (politician & actress)
David Jones (painter & poet)
Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen (TV presenter)
Spike Milligan (comedian & writer)
Mica Paris (singer/song-writer)
Sybil Pheonix MBE (community worker)
Doris Stokes (medium)
Terry Waite (Archbishop's Envoy)
Max Wall (comedian)
Ian Wright (footballer)

For more information

For more information on Forest Hill and its history please refer to the following publications, all available at Lewisham Local Studies Centre in Lewisham Library:

The Changing face of Lewisham by Stephen Byrne (1965) Lewisham Borough Council: London

Images of London : Lewisham by John Coulter and Barry Olley (2003)

Sydenham & Forest Hill Past and Present by John Coulter Historical Publications

Looking back at Lewisham : Courtesy of Lewisham Arts and Library Services local History Centre,

IDEAL HOMES: SUBURBIA IN FOCUS - A joint venture of The London Boroughs of Bexley , Bromley , Greenwich , Lambeth , Lewisham , Southwark and the University of Greenwich .